On Drawing Part 6

So, if Lesson 1 of Drawing was to activate the right-side of the brain and shut down the analytical, symbol wielding left-side of the brain, then Lesson 2 can be summarised as ‘drawing the spaces’. If the conclusion of the first lesson was that the left-brain doesn’t observe it just draws symbols of what it wants you to draw and that by copying upside drawings fools it into handing over control to the right-side, then how do we extend that when turning the real world upside isn’t an option? That’s where drawing chairs starts to become interesting.

Let me explain, pretty much everything has two sides or more specifically every line we draw could be the edge of one thing or another. If it’s the edge of one thing then the left-brain will jump in and say ‘chair!’ or ‘eye!’ or ‘nose!’ and simply draw the age old symbol for that thing. So what we do is to look at that edge and then draw what’s on the other side. And usually, what’s on the other side isn’t something we can label quite so easily and so this is where the right-brain is allowed to come forward to create an accurate representation of that space with no name. So we go from ‘eye’ to ‘bit above the eye with no name’ and ‘bit below the eye with no name’ and guess what? Once those two areas have been drawn, an eye appears between them!

Let’s try with the spaces between the parts of a chair, but before that, let’s remind ourselves of how left-brain draws chairs:

11th February 2016 – a wicker chair in a B&B in Penzance.

Now some examples where only the spaces between the chair were drawn:

Chair in Ledbury 15th February 2016 – 4 days later!

A folding Ikea style chair just another day after.

And another chair the same day

And another couple of drawings of the same chair on 28th February 2016 – that’s 17 days after the first example about.